. >> narrator: the mission in paris was leaderless. someone needed to turn it around, pull it all together. mitt took over. >> he immediately starts kind of establishing himself as a leader within the church because there's a vacuum. >> narrator: those closest to him say the experience had changed him. >> he made a commitment to himself to work as hard. and i think part of that comes from that experience of going overseas and seeing other people, and having life-threatening experiences and deciding that you're going to-what you're going to make out of your life. and he decided he wanted to make the most he could out of his life, and worked as hard as he possibly could to do that. >> narrator: by the early 1980s, barry obama had left hawaii and his grandparents behind. now he was on the mainland, in los angeles, at occidental college. they called it oxy. >> he was the most casual, unpretentious, nicest guy. i mean, my indelible image of him was always in a hawaiian shirt, and some op shorts and flip-flops. i don't know that he had a lon